The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman

by

Louise Erdrich

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Themes and Colors
Power, Solidarity, and Community Action Theme Icon
Oppression and Supposed Good Intentions Theme Icon
Humor and Pain Theme Icon
Sex, Violence, and Gender Theme Icon
Agency and Exploitation Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Night Watchman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humor and Pain Theme Icon

When confronted with pain and suffering, characters in the novel often use humor as a way to get through it. After Thomas has had a stroke, Louis comes to the hospital to pick him up. Louis feels guilty because he thinks that if he had gone on the trip to Washington, Thomas might not have been so overworked and might not have had a stroke. Thomas, for his part, feels like this battle against the Termination Bill and Arthur Watkins might “cost him everything.” Instead of delving into those emotions, when Louis and Thomas see each other for the first time, they joke with one another. Thomas asks Louis if he’s down in the city because his horses got out again, and Louis says he’s there to bring Thomas back in grand style, with a red carpet laid out to Juggie’s car.

Similarly, after Patrice has been essentially kidnapped, witnessed disturbing scenes at the addresses where she had checked for Vera, and is about to be lowered into the tank to be the waterjack (all of which happens in one day), she looks for humor in the situation. Specifically, she aims to locate a kind of feeling and thinking that could “only be described in Chippewa,” where the “strangeness was also humorous” and the danger became something “you might laugh at,” all while knowing you could be hurt and that the potential damage could be devastating. With that in mind, it’s notable that one of Arthur Watkins’s most damning qualities is that he has “no sense of humor,” which Thomas finds even more frightening than the Mormon bible. Thomas also points out how the exploits of the figure Nanabozho (a trickster figure in Chippewa folklore) differ from the Mormon bible, considering how Nanabozho created “everything useful and much that was essential, like laughter.” This perspective suggests that humor can transform pain into something more manageable, while a lack of humor can lead a person to harm and dehumanize others.

Related Themes from Other Texts
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Humor and Pain ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Humor and Pain appears in each chapter of The Night Watchman. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
chapter length:
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Aft
Get the entire The Night Watchman LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Night Watchman PDF

Humor and Pain Quotes in The Night Watchman

Below you will find the important quotes in The Night Watchman related to the theme of Humor and Pain.
The Waterjack Quotes

Gawiin ingikendizo siin. I am a stranger to myself […] This was again the sort of feeling and thinking that could only be described in Chippewa, where the strangeness was also humorous and the danger surrounding this entire situation was the sort that you might laugh at, even though you could also get hurt, and there were secrets involved, and desperation, for indeed she had nowhere, after her unthinkable short immediate future rolling in the water tank, nowhere to go but the dressing room down at the other end of the second-floor hall of Log Jam 26.

Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
The Lamanites Quotes

“Their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness, feeding upon beasts of prey, dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins.”

“What do you think, Rosey?” said Thomas. “It’s us.”

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
Page Number: 381
Explanation and Analysis: